Yesterday I realized that the Cherry Blossom season is about to reach its height in my region of the country this weekend, and I don’t know how to get to any places to see it in its glory. I also have a dinner invitation from someone on Sunday and I don’t want to make a bad impression on her family by saying, “Sorry I’m 2 hours late for the meal. I got lost trying to find cherry blossoms and by the time I got there it didn’t make sense to leave right away.” Eat Your Kimchi has a several-years-old video blog entry about the Bucheon festival, as well as some really general directions on how to get there (to Dodang mountain park and the Azalea Flower garden, in particular).
Since responses to questions on their blog take a little time (especially this time of week when they’re churning out new videos, and since they have over 20,000 fans now), I gathered up my nerve after work on Monday and set out to do some exploring in Bucheon. I took my normal 015 bus (though some of the 31 buses go there too) to Bucheon station, and hopped over one station east to Sosa station. I knew that much, but had no idea about the exit to take and there are at least 3 different exits. I also knew some bus numbers that ran from the station to the park in 2009, but bus routes change, so I wasn’t sure about transportation.
I attempted to ask a lady at a small convenience store vendor stand by a bus stop outside exit 1 for directions. I asked where Dodangsan was, in Korean, and I got a reply in… Korean, of course! I need to stop asking the questions in a language until I can sort of understand the answers. Or memorize how to say “I only speak a little Korean/I don’t understand.” I thought I heard her say a number, so I wrote it on a note pad and looked at her inquiringly. She shook her head, frustrated, and scribbled out a note with the actual directions. She kept saying (and gesturing) three, but I couldn’t for the life of me see a 3 bus. So I nodded thanks, bought a small package of candy from her, pretended like I sort of understood, and set off down the street after trying unsuccessfully to read her scribbled handwriting. I’m getting better with reading the letters, and I have a little dictionary in my Korean cell phone, but I couldn’t read what she wrote.
Several blocks down the road, I thought about the interaction, tried the translation again, and realized she was trying to tell me over and over that I had taken the wrong subway exit; I needed exit 3, not 1. Once I realized that, laughed at the situation, and returned to the subway to exit via number 3, the bus routes suddenly made sense with the 71 she had also written. But even though I could read/translate the verb for “get off,” I couldn’t read the location of where I was supposed to disembark. Since it was starting to get dark, I decided to give up my search for the night to try another time. That was a frustrating feeling, but it was crowded by the street and I didn’t feel like making a fool of myself trying to ask someone again. It worked out great though because I found a street vendor selling strawberries right behind me for a super low price. They were on the ripe side, but when I got home and washed some off, they were some of the best I had tasted in ages. So far, no adverse effects from eating a fruit I couldn’t peel either.
When I was walking back into the station, trying to console myself with the info I *had* gained, in addition to the success of the strawberry find, I made a much more wonderful discovery: a Daiso store right inside the subway! Now for those of you not familiar with Korea, let me explain this. It’s sort of like a Big Lots or Dollar General equivalent. So they have super affordable versions of everything, and the quality isn’t much different for the more highly priced stuff I’d find at my more local Home Plus or Lotte Mart. Daiso also has some lovely examples of “Engrish” on their products, though I didn’t actually find the mug I was hoping to buy after seeing it on Eat Your Kimchi.
I did find several other things for making my apartment a little more homey though, including some tiny herb plants, some picture frames, and a floor cushion, and I found some really cheap VCD movies with English subtitles! VCD (video CD) is a nice format since it’s region-free and plays through Windows Media Player. The downside is that you can’t remove the subtitles and the video quality is pretty poor, but still, they were less than $3 movies (3,000 won) each that I could watch on my laptop. I bought two Korean movies and one American one (Inkheart). I had been trying to find a Daiso for a couple of weeks and had been unsuccessful. At least, I couldn’t find one until my unsuccessful quest to find the cherry blossom park, so it worked out in the end! I still have some time to ask people how to get there or to translate the festival flier I took pictures of at the Sosa subway stop. I know I was close, based on the flier map, but the map was just a little too stylized to be able to get a clear idea of how to get to the mountain park. Maybe Wednesday or Thursday!
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